Reading into Writing: Blog items
Date: 17th Oct 2023 @ 8:13pm
This half term the children children in Reception have been beginning to learn their phase 2 letter sounds. They have been taking part in a daily phonics session learning four new sounds per week. The children have had lots of opportunities during continuous provision and adult led activities to practices recognising the graphemes, hearing the initial sound in words, orally segmenting simple words and blending sounds to read simple words. It is really important that the children have an opportunity to practice their early reading skills at home by reading their home reading book a minimun of three times per week.
"a a apple" Isla
"m-a-p map" Sid
"t for teddy' Levi
Date: 17th Oct 2023 @ 2:54pm
We've had a great morning in Year 6 with our first 'No Pen' morning of the year. We began with some grammar and punctuation work, where in pairs we picked different cards with tasks on and discussed them together. We then fed back to the class our answers and checked that we were right. Then we moved on to lots of oracy work - this began with asking 'would you rather...' questions to our partners. We had to give reasons for our own choices and listen carefully to our partner's resposnes. If we were picked, we had to give the response our partner gave. We finished the first session with some agree, build on, challenge statements. Again, this gave us lots of opportunities to talk to other children and give justifications for our answers. In Maths, we carried out different activities in the 2 groups, including loops card games, tarsias and orally explaining mistakes in calculations.
Date: 17th Oct 2023 @ 7:59am
Date: 16th Oct 2023 @ 9:54pm
Over the last few weeks, we have been putting all of our States of Matter knowledge together to learn about The Water Cycle. We created a model of the cycle in class then we used our knowledge to write a story about 'Robbie the rainddrop' and his journey around The Water Cycle.
Date: 16th Oct 2023 @ 9:35pm
Over the last couple of weeks, Year 4 have been celebrating Black History Month in our PSHE and Reading into Writing lessons. This year, the main theme of Black History Month is 'Celebrating our Sisters.' Furthermore, our year group focus was sporting achievements. Therefore, in PSHE, we researched a range of Black British Women athletes who have made a significant impact on the sporting industry. We then used this to create our own artwork. This allowed us to discuss key words, such as diversity and culture, and emphasise the importance of appreciating similarities and differences between everyone.
In Reading into Writing, we have been working towards writing a non-chronological report about Lauren James. Firstly, we looked at some existing non-chonological reports about Lauren James before researching interesting facts about her early life and football career, including her biggest achievements. After this, we collated these facts into our own non-chronological reports.
We have found it very interesting to learn about all of the incredible Black British athletes and their amazing achivements and impact they have had on our history.
Date: 11th Oct 2023 @ 7:25pm
This week, we have held our first Spelling Bee of the year. Four children from each year group were selected to represent their house. They were each given three words to spell from our 3/4 statutory spelling words.
We are extremel proud of the children in Year 4 who represented our year group and their houses. They got all of their spellings correct which shows hard work and dedication to learning their spellings. Well done!
Date: 11th Oct 2023 @ 11:49am
We have held our first Spelling Bee of the year and what a wonderful event it was! 4 children in each year group represented their house and were given three words to spell from over a list of 30 possible words. Every child showed courage and determination when it came to spelling their words. It was a very close contest, with Chepstow winning overall with 15 out of 15. We are very proud of all the children who represented their house and are looking forward to the next one.
Year 5 - Biographies for Black History Month
Date: 6th Oct 2023 @ 4:27pm
This week the pupils in year 5 have been using what they have learned to write a biography about a famous black musician. They reseached the musician's family background and their music career, before planning, drafting and editing their writing. Today, pupils wrote their finished biography!
Date: 21st Sep 2023 @ 12:54pm
In Year 6 we have finished our first Reading into Writing journey - explanatory texts. We followed all the stages of the journey:
- Cold write
- Looking at a WAGOLL for features
- Immersion in Reading
- GPS linked to the genre
- Teacher model/Shared write
- Improving a WABOLL
- Plan
- Draft
- Edit
- Hot write
We produced some excellent writing for our first piece in Year 6. Our end piece of writing was to explain how to use a 'Teacher Pleaser' machine. We think our teachers would be very happy if they had a machine like the ones we invented!!
Date: 20th Sep 2023 @ 9:44pm
This week the children listened to the story 'No-Bot The Robot' - a robot who lost his bottom! It is a hilarious adventure about resilience and friendship.
Take a look at the different ways we explored the story through art and design.
"I made a robot with a square body" Mathew.
"My robot has a square head" Esme.
"His friends helped him find his bottom" Summer.
"Hel left it on the swing" George.
Date: 13th Sep 2023 @ 8:36pm
As part of our Reading into Writing journey, Year Two have been learning how to use conjunctions effectively to join clauses. We enjoyed working in small groups to match clauses with appropriate conjunctions. Once matched, we had to re-read the sentences carefully to make sure that they made sense with the chosen conjunction. We will continue to develop our understanding and start to use a wider range of conjunctions in our next piece of writing.
Year 3- Exploring explanation texts!
Date: 8th Sep 2023 @ 4:08pm
This week we have started our new Reading into Writing journey looking at explanation text. We identified and located features in a range of texts and thought about which we may use when writing our own.
Date: 8th Sep 2023 @ 3:53pm
This week, we started to look at figurative language. We focused on similes, personification, metaphors, onomatopoeia and alliteration.
Date: 7th Sep 2023 @ 7:27pm
Alongside the rest of the school, Year 1 have been thinking about our goals for the year. We discussed how we needed to choose a sensible goal and think of ideas to make a plan for how we are going to get there. We had lots of good ideas and are looking forward to taking small steps towards our goals!
Date: 18th Jul 2023 @ 4:24pm
Today, we used the computers to create our hot write of a persuasive advert. We thought about making it appealing by using bright colours and exciting shapes as well as using persuasive language to persuased someone to visit either Antarctica, the rainforest or the desert. We used our Geography knowledge from hot and cold places to make sure we told some facts. We had to have lots of patience but enjoyed using the chromebooks for our writing.
Year 6 - Choral Speaking Winners!
Date: 14th Jul 2023 @ 5:29pm
Year 6 have had a great week! On Wednesday we won the Boundary choral speaking competition with our performance of 'Tarantella' by Hilaire Belloc. Today, we took part in the Blackpool interschool competition and won! The children were amazing and wowed the judges with their brilliant performance.
Date: 10th Jul 2023 @ 1:36pm
We were so thrilled to be visited by author, James Harris on Friday 7th July. He conducted a whole school assembly where he talked about writing books and how he got into it. James grew up in seaside town, near Middlesbrough (just like Blackpool). James definitely inspired some of our aspiring young writers to follow in his footsteps and begin writing their own books.
Date: 7th Jul 2023 @ 3:46pm
Today we were visited by children's author, James Harris. James entertained the whole school with a fantastic assembly and told us about himself and the books he has written. This afternoon, children in year 5 spend time with James and found out more about how he became a published author. We also used some of his methods to create interesting monsters, which we then made up stories about.
Date: 4th Jul 2023 @ 10:29am
Our Reading into Writing journey this half term has been persuasive letters. We have explored the genre and read many examples in order to gather useful words and phrases. As a year group, we decided we would write a letter to Rishi Sunak to highlight the issues the world is facing with plastic pollution. We made sure that our writing was formal and we experimented with ambitious vocabulary. When we are finished, we are going to post our letters to Downing Street!
Date: 22nd Jun 2023 @ 2:53pm
Today, we got taken over by some Year 5 children; we started the day with an assembly by our new head and deputy headteacher Miss Bell and Mr Binns to introduce our characteristics of tolerance. When we returned to our classroom our new teachers helped us recap what the different word classes are and helped us complete a sorting activity of different verbs, adjectives, nouns and adverbs. After playtime, we chanted our 2, 5 and 10 times tables before completing some sheets thinking about the multiples of each and calculating multiplication questions. We ended our Takeover morning with Guided Reading. We enjoyed being taught by the Year 5 children although they found it tiring and hard.
Year 1 Julia Donaldson Stories
Date: 19th Jun 2023 @ 11:42am
Today we continued our Reading into Writing journey - Julia Donaldson stories. We read an extract from 'The Gruffalo' and 'Room on the Broom' and found the key features of each, including capital letters, speech marks and adjectives. We used our criteria to enable us to find each feature and mark it in the correct colour.
Date: 17th Jun 2023 @ 5:24pm
This week we began our next journey, reading stories by the same author. Today we read 'Zog' by Julia Donaldson. We discussed the story together before looking indepth at the setting, characters and the key events at the beginning, middle and end of the story.
Date: 13th Jun 2023 @ 8:04pm
Today we started our Dilemma story journey. At the start of our Reading into Writing journeys we immerse ourselves in the genre and pick out features to create a features list. The children we brilliant at remembering lots of different GPS we have learned over the year.
Date: 19th May 2023 @ 3:41pm
This week Reception have enjoyed reading The Bog Baby. A story of two small sisters who discover a bog baby (small and blue with wings like a dragon) in a magic pond, and decide to keep him.
We wrote about the story, painted bog babies, created our own using different art resources and told the story at the story table, using puppets.
Next week we will make our own Bog Baby out of clay and construct a home for him.
Take a look at what we have done so far!
Ella-Rose wins the National Literacy Trust poetry prize!
Date: 19th May 2023 @ 12:02pm
During Thursday's assembly, Ella-Rose was presented with a bundle of books by Get Blackpool Reading as she won the National Literacy Trust poetry competition. Here is Ella-Rose’s poem:
"Litter, litter goes in the bin,
To throw it on the ground is a really big sin.
The earth is home to lots of creatures and bugs, they don't come in our home and throw litter on rugs.
Dont sin it, bin it! working together we can win it."
Ella's class were also given their own copy of "The Creature Choir" by David Walliams. Well done to everyone who took part!
